Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union Local No. 4-23 v. American Petrofina Co. Of Texas

820 F.2d 747
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedAugust 6, 1987
Docket84-2322
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 820 F.2d 747 (Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union Local No. 4-23 v. American Petrofina Co. Of Texas) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union Local No. 4-23 v. American Petrofina Co. Of Texas, 820 F.2d 747 (5th Cir. 1987).

Opinions

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

Appellants Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union Local No. 4-23 (OCAW) and Leo Max Hildabridle, Jr. contend that their dispute with appellee American Petrofina Company of Texas concerning Petrofina’s undertaking to discharge Mr. Hildabridle must be submitted to arbitration. Petrofina contends that it has no duty to arbitrate the matter because there was no employment contract in effect when Mr. Hildabridle was discharged. The [748]*748case is on remand from the United States Supreme Court, American Petrofina Co. of Texas v. Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Int’l Union Local No. 4-23, — U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 2912, 91 L.Ed.2d 541 (1986), with instructions to reconsider the case in the light of AT & T Technologies Inc. v. Communications Workers of America, 475 U.S. 643, 106 S.Ct. 1415, 89 L.Ed.2d 648 (1986). We have done so, and we conclude that the question of the right of the company to have discharged Mr. Hildabridle must be submitted to arbitration under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the parties.

I.

The facts of this case were set out in detail in our prior opinion, 759 F.2d 512 (5th Cir.1985). We repeat them here briefly. On January 8, 1982, appellant OCAW’s collective bargaining agreement with appellee Petrofina expired, and an economic strike was undertaken by OCAW at appellee’s Port Arthur, Texas, refinery. On February 20, 1982, appellant Hildabridle, an OCAW member and a striker, allegedly brandished a knife at the company’s security guards on the picket line. Hildabridle was charged by local authorities with committing several misdemeanors. More than a year and a half later, Hildabridle was tried on one of the charges, making “a terroristic threat.” On November 8, 1983, he was acquitted of the charge, and all other charges against him were dropped by the district attorney.

Meanwhile, on May 27, 1982, Petrofina had sent Hildabridle a letter informing him that he was being terminated because of the knife-brandishing incident. OCAW immediately requested that the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charge Petrofina with committing an unfair labor practice under Section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 28 U.S.C. § 158, in undertaking to discharge Hildabridle. On July 21,1982, after Hildabridle’s indictment and sixteen months before his acquittal, the General Counsel refused to charge the company with a violation of the NLRA. He stated his conclusion that the company had a justified good faith belief that Hildabridle had misbehaved on the picket line.

After a strike lasting approximately eleven months, on December 20, 1982, the workers agreed to return to work. OCAW and Petrofina approved a new collective bargaining agreement that contained grievance and arbitration provisions identical to those contained in the agreement that had expired the previous January. Under the provisions of the new contract, the matter of a termination such as Hildabridle’s was an arbitrable dispute if the termination was covered by the agreement.

OCAW and Petrofina at the same time also signed a back-to-work agreement. In it, the parties agreed to disagree about the arbitrability of Hildabridle’s termination: “The Union’s position is that such action is subject to the grievance and arbitration provisions and the Company’s position is that it is not.” OCAW demanded arbitration of the dispute under the terms of the new contract and claimed a violation of that contract when Petrofina refused. OCAW then filed suit under Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), 29 U.S.C. § 185, claiming that the company had violated the collective bargaining agreement.

The district court found that the company had no duty to arbitrate the dispute. The court reasoned that the dispute fell outside the coverage of the old contract because the incident occurred six weeks after that contract had expired, and that Hildabridle fell outside the coverage of the new contract because he was fired nine months before that contract was signed. 586 F.Supp. 643 (E.D.Tex.1984). In our earlier decision, we reversed, holding that the dispute was arguably arbitrable and therefore should be submitted to the arbitrator for his determination as to its arbitrability. 759 F.2d 512 (5th Cir.1985). The Supreme Court vacated our opinion in light of their decision in AT & T Technologies Inc. v. Communications Workers of America, 475 U.S. 643, 106 S.Ct. 1415, 89 L.Ed.2d 648 (1986), and remanded the case [749]*749to us for reconsideration. — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 2912, 91 L.Ed.2d 541 (1986).

II.

In AT & T Technologies, the Supreme Court offered guidance in the application of four central principles in the law of labor arbitration, all derived from the Steelworkers Trilogy cases of I960.1 As we recently explained:

The cornerstone of these principles is that the duty to submit a dispute to arbitration arises from contracts, therefore a party cannot be compelled to arbitrate a dispute if he has not agreed to do so. [AT & T Technologies, 106 S.Ct.] at 1418.
The second principle is that the question of whether the parties agreed to arbitrate a dispute is to be decided by the court, not the arbitrator. Id. The third principle is that courts should not determine the merits of the underlying grievance, even if it appears to be frivolous. Id. at 1419. The court is only to determine whether the grievance is arbitrable.
The fourth and final principle is that when a contract contains an arbitration clause, there is a presumption of arbitrability unless the court determines “with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible of an interpretation that covers the asserted dispute. Doubts should be resolved in favor of coverage.” Id., quoting Warrior & Gulf, 363 U.S. at 583, 80 S.Ct. at 1352-53.

Int’l Ass’n of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO, Lodge No. 2504 v. Intercontinental Mfg. Co., 812 F.2d 219, 221 (5th Cir.1987). As the Court noted in AT & T Technologies, “[t]hese precepts have served the industrial relations community well, and have led to continued reliance on arbitration, rather than strikes or lockouts, as the preferred method of resolving disputes arising during the term of a collective-bargaining agreement. We see no reason either to question their validity, or to eviscerate their meaning by creating an exception to their general applicability.” 106 S.Ct. at 1418.

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